Bangkok, Oct 31: A disgraced Thai beauty queen has tearfully confessed to a secret marriage after she was stripped of her title when a photograph of her wedding seven years ago ran in the local press.
Chatuporn Saengthong lost her Miss Thailand World second runner-up crown on Tuesday, just three days after her fairy-tale dream of winning a place in the contest -- for single women only -- had come true.
"I never thought my past would come back as a big sin to haunt me," she sobbed to reporters, reported a newspaper Thursday.
"I didn't mean to deceive the Miss Thailand organisers and my fellow contestants, or embarrass my family. I was just chasing my dream, like many other girls. I was just hoping it could happen to me, like Cinderella."
Chatuporn at first vehemently denied she was the woman in a wedding photograph splashed across the front pages of Thai newspapers and scrutinised by an intrigued public, but after losing her crown decided to come clean.
She insisted her teenage marriage to Anurak Unhakarn, who the press has not been able to contact, was a mistake.
"I don't want to talk about it. I was 17 and I was neither willing, nor ready. I just made a wrong decision," she was quoted as saying.
Chatuporn, who was living alone when she applied to enter the contest, said she had contacted her ex-husband to explain she was making a bid for the title.
"I didn't beg him to help cover up the marriage, I simply explained the rules. He acknowledged me and hung up," she said.
Beauty pageants are extremely popular in Thailand -- one of the most famous is the annual Jumbo Queen for large-sized women, designed to highlight the plight of Thailand's diminishing numbers of wild elephants.
Earlier this year the first-ever Miss Spinster was also crowned after a bevy of mature beauties -- aged 28 or over -- strutted their stuff in a bid to prove that older women can be perfectly happy without a man on their arm.

Bureau Report